


A Dandelion In the Spring

by springsdandelion (writergirlie)



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-11
Updated: 2012-04-11
Packaged: 2017-11-03 11:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirlie/pseuds/springsdandelion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It took five, ten, fifteen years for me to agree. But Peeta wanted them so badly." My take on Katniss's journey to get pregnant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dandelion In the Spring

It doesn’t happen right away.

 

After a childhood of near starvation and a girlhood spent in war and other unimaginable horrors, I think my body has learned to switch on every defense mechanism it has at its disposal, and the spark of hope that had once shone so brightly, brighter than any fear I could put a name to, has started to dim into a whisper of a flicker.

 

It takes five years for me to agree to even try. And another five years for my body to actually cooperate. In the dawn of the sixth year, when I start to flirt with the idea of relying on some sort of medical manipulation that the Capitol has invented to give me the miracle that Peeta and I are so desperately seeking, it finally happens. I find myself pregnant.

 

There’s relief at first. A confirmation that my body hasn’t betrayed me after all, that after every abuse it has been put through, it can still give that fundamental gift of life. Then the unspeakable joy follows, followed by the familiar fear of its loss, but I learn to tame that as the weeks go by.

 

In the tenth week, the unimaginable happens: my body turns on me again. Peeta finds me on the floor of our bedroom that afternoon, fighting every impulse not to be pulled under by wave after wave of excruciating pain, surrounded by a pool of blood that spreads out from under me, slick and dark and reeking of that horrible scent of burnt metal.

 

When I come to, my mother is tending to me. Peeta’s sent for her and she boards the first train out of District 4, bearing her stash of sleep syrup, but none of the morphling I crave. It’s Peeta I want, but her hand I feel on my shoulder when I’m curled up in bed, my back facing the door. I want to shrug it away, but can’t muster the strength, so she lays down beside me and cries silently on my pillow.

 

For two years after this, Peeta doesn’t ask again. He knows the answer will be no, although in the stillness of the night, the longing always comes back to me, strong and fierce and potent. My arms ache for the baby I should have been holding, the child that Peeta and I would have loved more than life itself.

 

In the thirteenth year, the fourteenth year, I think that Peeta has stopped wishing for it. We go about our days and make plans for the future. The trips we will take, the projects around the house. And on the first day of the fifteenth year, when we’re staring at the star-strewn sky and talking about what the next three hundred and sixty five days will bring, I tell him.

 

“I want to try again.”

 

She’s born on the first day of spring in year sixteen. Beautiful and pink, and screaming for all the world to hear, and I fall in love with her the instant she is placed in my arms. No, it happens even before then, when I first feel her moving inside of me and know that this time, my miracle may finally happen.

 

My mother places a vase of flowers on the nightstand when I let exhaustion finally claim me, after I nurse my newborn daughter for the first time. Peeta wakes me some time later and points it out to me.

 

“Hey,” he says. “Take a look at what I picked for you out in the yard.”

 

It’s a bunch of wild dandelions, bright yellow and bursting with life, the promise that hope is never a lost cause. I look down at my sleeping daughter and kiss her cheek, and I say a silent prayer of thanks for my dandelion in the spring.

 


End file.
